STUDIO-ONLINE

With the advent of digital cameras and associated mainstream online forums such as flickr and youtube, the modernist impulse to create art for art’s sake has given way to a sort of user-generated white noise, where one’s ability to stream content without restraint merges with another’s unrestrained need to stream content, leaving little room for individual distinction.  Like names in a phone book that point to an ocean of individuals who have little relevancy in one’s day to day life, streaming art for an online public tends to exist with little context and as result, flounders in a kind of atomized digital anonymity.

Artificial Scarcity is Ripple’s attempt to rescue three years worth of art photography from the digital abyss by pulling a publicity stunt of sorts, highlighting the role that the audience/institution/collector plays in determining the worth of artistic output.

Ripple will exhibit an installation that includes a documentary video of a process-oriented work where he distributes 5×7 prints of all the images from his flickr stream throughout Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York and moves all the digital copies of the photos onto disc, puts the discs into a padded mailer, deletes the image files from his flickr account and his hard drive, tosses the padded envelope from the window of a moving car and sets back out to find the padded envelope that contains the discs the first weekend in December.  If the discs are found, you better believe they’re for sale.  If they’re not found, the 5×7 prints and a few blog site copies of the images will be all that remain of the work.

CLOSING RECEPTION: Saturday, December 19, 7-10PM

Co-Lab
A New Media Project Space + Community Garden
613 Allen St
Austin, TX 78702
Phone: 512 300 8217
Web: www.colabspace.org

British artist Phil Collins, nominated in 2006 for the Turner Prize. Collins’s work often originates in areas of conflict, shifting the focus away from sensationalist news coverage to reveal unexpected aspects of life in contested territories – from Belfast to Belgrade to Baghdad and Bogotá.

The exhibition includes his celebrated two-screen video installation they shoot horses, which shows a disco dance marathon filmed over 7 hours in Ramallah with a group of young Palestinians. Alongside this is featured the carousel slide installationfree fotolab. Shown side by side these two works allow unexpected and spontaneous parallels to be drawn between the lives of the individuals depicted.

While not directly political, they shoot horses resonates with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The artist auditioned participants in February 2004 and filmed two separate groups of young people dancing during the course of a day without any breaks. Throughout, the production was interrupted by power failures, technical problems and calls to prayer from a nearby mosque revealing the elation, stoicism and eventual exhaustion of the dancers. The work is concerned with heroism and collapse and reveals beauty surviving under duress.

Continuing the participatory aspect of Collins’ practice, free fotolab has been created over a period of 5 years by inviting the inhabitants of various cities worldwide to submit undeveloped rolls of 35mm film. These were then processed and developed for free, on the understanding that universal rights be relinquished to the artist. Its use of 35mm film and presentation on a carousel slide projector, itself an increasingly obsolete technology, are central to the ideas behind the work. For Collins they captures a number of traits—the passing of time, the secret lives of images, the flicker of memory—which are intrinsically connected to the physicality of photographic film and to theluminosity of a slideshow.

The Collection
Danes Terrace
Lincoln
LN2 1LP
Phone: +44 (0)1522 550990
Web: www.lincolnshire.gov.uk

Glasgow’s museums, galleries, streets, bridges and hidden spaces will showcase the work of national and international artists when Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art returns in April 2010, building on the critical and popular success of the Festival in 2008.

An epic and immersive installation in the enormous interior of Tramway, a soundwork resonating from the banks of the River Clyde, an assortment of surreal objects inserted within the collection of one of Europe’s most important museums, drawings and sculptures from one of contemporary culture’s most influential artists, and bicycles take to the city’s streets for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art’s fourth edition.

Under the artistic direction of Katrina Brown and inspired by the relationships between past, present and future, over 50 artists are presenting sculpture, drawings, film, video, soundworks, performance and music in venues and locations, ranging from the renowned Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Gallery of Modern Art, the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and Tramway to diverse artist-run collectives, small galleries, temporary sites and the hidden and outdoor spaces of the city.

Glasgow-based artists remain at the forefront of the Festival with David Shrigley creating a collection of intriguing sculptures and objects for museum cases at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum; Glasgow-born Susan Philipsz realises her first outdoor sound work on home ground along the banks of the River Clyde, and Douglas Gordon opens the Festival with a new video installation citing his own landmark work 24 Hour Psycho, first shown at Tramway in 1993. Renowned environmental arts organisation NVA re-enact the infamous White Bike Plan, a Dutch anarchist eco-action of the 1960s, by releasing fifty white bikes onto the streets of Glasgow, whilst Kate Davis and Faith Wilding collaborate on an exhibition exploring feminist legacies in contemporary art at CCA.

A number of international artists are also at the heart of the programme including a significant selection of important drawings from the ARTISTS ROOMS collection by Joseph Beuys who had strong links to Scotland and whose work provides a powerful context to much of the work showing in the Festival; renowned Swiss artist Christoph Büchel, known for his massive-scale hyperreal experiential works takes on the imposing space at Tramway with a dramatic new commission; David Maljkovic (Croatia) – one of the most exciting artists to emerge from Europe in recent years – has his first solo show in the UK – video and collage works in a specially designed sculptural installation in a new space in the Merchant City; Gerard Byrne, who represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2007 presents a major new film work; and internationally acclaimed artist Fiona Tan shows her mesmerising film installation Tomorrow at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Punk artist-designer and radical feminist Linder exhibits her montage images at Sorcha Dallas gallery and presents a unique performance in collaboration with fashion designer Richard Nicoll and musician Stuart McCallum; and other galleries, venues and artists’ collectives such as Transmission Gallery Lowsalt, market Gallery, The Modern Institute, Mary Mary, FINN collective, Glasgow Sculpture Studios and SWG3 create new works in found spaces, existing venues and on the streets of the city. Washington Garcia presents the work of Australian artist David Noonan at the Mitchell Library, while Glasgow Sculpture Studios is working with Jimmie Durham. The Festival’s exhibitions programme is complemented by a lively programme of talks, screenings, seminars, performances and other events.

Taking place in the city every other year, and combining some of the characteristics of a conventional visual arts ‘biennial’, with a more event-based experience, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art has already become a unique event in the cultural calendar with one of the most groundbreaking and dynamic presentations in contemporary visual arts practice. The Festival will also provide an opportunity for both reflection and future-gazing, coinciding as it does with the 20th anniversary of Glasgow’s reign as European Capital of Culture in 1990.

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art is funded by Glasgow City Council, Glasgow: Scotland with style, EventScotland, the national events agency, Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Enterprise Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art is produced and managed by Culture and Sport Glasgow.

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
C/O Culture & Sport Glasgow
20 Trongate Glasgow, Scotland G1 5ES

Janek Simon
Volkswagon Transporter T2
2008

Arnolfini has commissioned Krakow-based artist Janek Simon to produce a new project for his forthcoming solo exhibition. It is inspired by theorist Paul Virilio’s concept of the ‘end of geography’, which proposes the idea of the contraction of time and space as a result of the process of globalisation. Simon will investigate new understandings of geography and distance in the globalised world by revisiting key locations of the historic Trans-Atlantic Trade Triangle – namely West Coast Africa, the Caribbean, and Bristol. His work reflects an awareness that, like all travellers, his perceptions are that of a consumer, and are a technologically-mediated view of geographic space, distance and globalised trade.

Simon is currently creating a series of artworks for an installation that will emerge from the experiences and exchanges on his travels. His personal experience of travel has always been an important inspiration for his work, particularly in situations where he seeks ways to transgress the usual tourist glass cage, less via an idealistic notion of humanist connectedness and more by placing himself within an embedded relation, such as through informal business dealings.

Janek Simon’s works use information systems in order to ascertain the extent and character of the relation between culture and economy in contemporary society. Remaining pragmatic at their core, Simon’s works seek to bypass mainstream modes for producing culture and objects, often to exist within his personal cycle of productivity. His works give the appearance of simplicity, yet they tend to offer insight into possibilities for a wider understanding of how things work or are made.

Janek Simon lives and works in Krakow, Poland. He studied sociology and psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. His recent exhibitions include Manifesta 7, Trentino & South Tyrol, 2008; Far West, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2008; and has had a solo exhibition at Zacheta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, 2005. In 2007 he was awarded the Prize for Young Polish Art. Janek Simon was artist in residence at Arnolfini during 2008-09.

Arnolfini
16 Narrow Quay
Bristol, BS1 4QA, United Kingdom
Phone: 0117 917 2300
Web: www.arnolfini.org.uk

Chris Levine is a unique artist with a rare sensibility for the use of light. Renowned for his 3D and still images of iconic figures, ranging from Massive Attack to HRH Queen Elizabeth II, he has now gone on to create a series of stunning 3D holographic portraits of legend Grace Jones. Stillness at the Speed of Light will showcase the extraordinary alchemy between this iconic figure and leading cutting-edge artist.

A highlight of the exhibition will be a statement, holographic image of Grace with her eyes shut; one of several ethereal, sensory portraits. Grace’s great gift in identifying zeitgeist artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Paul Goude and Eiko Ishioka, is continued with this new and exciting collaboration, whilst demonstrating the evolution in holographic portraiture.

This unique show will also be used to launch Grace’s new video Love you to life, which Chris Levine directed.

The Vinyl Factory
@ Phonica Records
51 Poland Street
London W 1F 7LZ

The exhibition includes a selection of work made over the last ten years, presented in an installation designed by Toby Paterson, and a major new commission.

Toby Paterson makes paintings, reliefs and constructions which explore the relationship between abstraction and reality. He has a keen interest in post-war modernist architecture which he deconstructs both materially and politically, developing a practice in which some works are almost understandable as architecture, while others are expressions of purely abstract form.

Paterson was born in Glasgow in 1974, and still lives and works in the city. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and in 2002 was the winner of the Beck’s Futures art prize. As well as his more gallery- based practice, he makes art for the public realm, and was recently the recipient of several public commissions, notably the completed Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion, part of the Portavilion project in London and Poised Array, a work made for the façade of the BBC Scotland Headquarters in Glasgow. Paterson has also been appointed lead artist on the extension to the Docklands Light Railway for the London Olympics in 2012.

Paterson’s work is as influenced by the architecture of Denys Lasdun, Cedric Price, and Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein at Gillespie Kidd & Coia as it is by the constructivist painting of Kenneth and Mary Martin, Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore, yet it makes its meaning primarily as painting rather than urban planning or architectural model-making. This exhibition is an opportunity to explore both the complexity and the consistency of Paterson’s practice in the context.

Exhibition supported by The Henry Moore Foundation

The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street
Edinburgh EH1 1DF
Phone: +44 (0) 131 225 2383
Web: www.fruitmarket.co.uk

Photographer: Karen Grainger

Re: Landscape presents illusory photographs of English rural scenes and coastlines. Using mirrors when photographing each landscape, Karen Grainger blurs the boundary between the reflected and the real.

The resulting compositions feature subtle interruptions to more striking disturbances that complicate any normal, easy viewing. In each case, the images provide a compelling perspective on what often remains unseen outside of the frame. In some images, the mirror plane could almost be read as mirage or mist; in others, the image is evidently reflected but the mirror’s size and location is hard to pin down. The mirror is also used to refract and distort, duplicating trees and tilting pathways.

These startling works call the viewers’ attention to the processes of reading and seeing images. At first glance, the images appear to be conventional landscapes but soon reveal inconsistencies and improbabilities. Rather than being invited to simply gaze into the landscape, the viewer is presented with an image that challenges representation.

Curator Louise Forrester comments: “I’m very excited about presenting this innovative work. The photographer invites us to share the game of understanding her landscapes, of imagining how they might have been produced – the sophisticated images are striking, and are sure to delight.”

The artist’s use of mirrors stems from her interest in the photograph as both object and image; the mirror standing as a metaphor for the photograph; both being materially limited but visually infinite. The work appears impossible in its composition, but each breach of reality only points to limitless possibility.

This exhibition presents an extraordinary take on the traditional landscape genre – don’t miss it.

Opening party:  February 4th, 7-9pm

Viewfinder Photography Gallery
Peyton Place
Greenwich, London, SE10 8RS
Phone: 020 8858 8351
Web: www.viewfinder.org.uk

A groundbreaking exhibition of video-paintings reflecting on the futility of war and the trauma of a violated land

East Central is proud to present an exhibition curated by Nour Wali of collaborative works by Iranian artists Shoja Azari and Shahram Karimi, showcasing for the first time in a London gallery their revolutionary artistic approach, which intertwines the media of painting and video.

Five artworks from the so-called “Oil Series” will surround viewers, re-creating a cinematic experience through the canvases’ glow of mesmerising colours. Referring to the first Gulf War, and presented in the darkened subterranean floor of East Central, the “Oil Series” depicts scenes of deserts aflame, with fires scorching the skies, smoke bellowing in the wind, a soldier disappearing into misty horizons and tanks reining over ashen land.

The works sample images from Werner Herzog’s film “Lessons of Darkness”, with scenes slowed, edited and re-framed by Azari, projected as brief looping videos onto Karimi’s hyperrealist paintings which are literally

brought to life, while Karimi also interweaves on the canvases barely decipherable lines of his own poetry written in Farsi, evoking intuitive thoughts lying underneath the surfaces.

Exhibited in its own enclave in this seminal show is the stunning video projection “Coffee House Painting”, another creative collaboration between Azari and Karimi, which was then recreated as a video projection by Azari. Rich in political and historical references, and equally critical of global politics, the work is inspired by the traditional Persian coffee house paintings that were popular in early 20th Century Iran and which spoke of heroes and villains from Persia’s epic history of myth and legend.

Reinventing this ancient tradition, in an amalgamation of past and present, east and west, painting and video, Azari’s “Coffee House Painting” is dotted with scenes of real soldiers, recounting their acts of horror in intermittent cameos against a traditional backdrop of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell with Islamic saints and prophets arranged haphazardly. American soldiers confessing their acts of brutality and torture at Abu Ghraib emerge and disappear from bubbles of smoke, intercepted by threatening calls by head of Hezbollah Nasrallah in defense of Lebanon, chants of Shiite “Ashura” rituals and the firing of machine guns.

A captivating yet sinister work that seems to reproach all nations, Eastern and Western, and emphasize the paradoxical pain and divisions that religious fervor has caused. Azari’s playful use of the video portrait cameos portraying documentary confessions evoke flashbacks to recent 2009 Persian “Twitter Revolution”, capturing snappy footage of the uprisings and street riots in Tehran in reaction to the alleged fraud of the Presidential elections. The “Coffee House Painting” brings to light not only Iran’s plight, but the tragic truth mirroring contemporary society that will probably represent the same looping reality even 20 years on.

Since 2006, Azari (New York based) and Karimi (living between Germany and New York) have worked in partnership to master a revolutionary approach to painting and video art. Featured in the celebrated “Iran Inside Out” group exhibition at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York (June-September 2009), this will be the artists’ first exhibition in Europe to showcase their sensational “Oil Paintings” (2009) and Shoja Azari’s “Coffee House Painting” video (2009).

“The really interesting aspect of these works is the very close collaboration between Shahram and myself…Painters have always wanted to bring real light into play, to find ways to connect light to pigment.  I think we may be on to something here”. Shoja Azari

Private View: January 14th, 6-9 pm

London-based artist Angela de la Cruz presents new and existing work in her first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery. Situated in-between painting and sculpture, de la Cruz’s works hide in corners, bully each other and fall from the wall as they fight against the physical constraints of gallery spaces.

Angela de la Cruz’s practice stems from a feeling of exhaustion with painting as a medium and from a desire to escape the illusion of the picture-plane. “My starting point was deconstructing painting. One day I took the cross bar out and the painting bent. From that moment on, I looked at the painting as an object.”

De la Cruz questions the status of painting, its solemnity and its authority, by employing and subverting the language of Modernism. Monochromes and Minimalist abstract works are disrupted physically; torn, broken, folded and taken from their stretchers. Given anthropomorphic titles such as Homeless, Ashamed or Deflated, the works do not attempt to convey emotions but demonstrate the emotions they themselves are feeling. De la Cruz’s work is nonetheless rooted within the tradition of painting. She explains that “by using the rules of painting it is then possible to subvert, revert and break them.”

Human-like in their situations and often referring openly to the body, de la Cruz’s works frequently have the artist’s height and body proportions as parameters for their own dimensions. She has in a letter directly addressed to the paintings, referred to them as “the bodies to love or to hate or to suffer.”

Although treated with a certain humour and even a cruelty, de la Cruz’s work is not a vessel for painful, emotional catharsis, but is rather an expression of an indefatigable determination in a hostile world, where even the gallery space seems unsympathetic; crushing works, or lodging them in doorways.

Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
London NW3 6DG
UK
Phone: +44 (0)20 7472 5500
Web: www.camdenartscentre.org

Installation view: Among Many (retrospective exhibition), 2005
Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Photographer: Isabella Matheus

London-based artist Angela de La Cruz presents new and existing work in her first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery.  Situated in-between painting and sculpture, de La Cruz’s works hide in corners, bully each other and fall from the wall as they fight against the physical constraints of gallery spaces.

Italian-born, Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino is one of the most significant artists working in Brazil today. Her new exhibition at Camden Arts Centre will include a site-specific installation and a selection of film works made over the last 30 years.

In a career that spans five decades and a diversity of disciplines and mediums including clay, ink, film and performance, Anna Maria Maiolino’s work retains a fundamental concern with creative and destructive processes and with identity; from the subjective to the universal. Conducting a dialogue between opposite yet complementary categories, Maiolino’s practice dissolves the dichotomies of inner and outer, self and other, void and matter, ancient and contemporary.

Maiolino’s early artistic experiments in Brazil throughout the 1960s and 1970s connect her to key moments of Brazilian art history: the New Figuration Movement, Neo-Concretism, and New Brazilian Objectivity, working alongside respected Brazilian artists such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. Later, she was associated with the Neo-Avant-Garde in Europe, particularly in Italy, as well as Minimalism and conceptual art in the United States.

At Camden Arts Centre, Maoilino will create an installation using several hundred kilograms of clay. Manually rolling and shaping the clay into hundreds of rolls or balls, the basic shapes used in ceramics, Maiolino refers to everyday tasks, to the individual, society and language; each piece retaining the distinctive marks of its manufacture, but collectively creating an imposing structure.

Over the course of the exhibition the clay will dry and begin to crumble, eventually turning to dust. By labouring to create a work of material impermanence, Maoilino comments on the transience and futility of creation, but also refers to a cycle of renewal, as the clay may be reformed and reused.

The exhibition will also include selected films made by Maiolino dating from the 1970s, amongst them: Y, (1974); Angelo Maiolino e Vitalia di Puglia (1975); +&- (1999).

Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
London NW3 6DG
UK
Phone: +44 (0)20 7472 5500
Web: www.camdenartscentre.org